K drama high

The giddy feeling you get on finishing a K drama and your heart is still in the K drama universe of idealistic fantasy and feet are floating just above the earth  :) 

Step goal

When I fail at something ,
My instinct is to immediately make my goal smaller. Ah I am not good at "This", I am not good enough for "This" nice/Big/Risky/Ambitious goal, I have to settle for "That" easier/less riskier/blander option instead. Fixed mindset! I am ashamed, I dont want to look like I am failing, so chose an easier option and pass instead  ( At this point, I want to rant about how irritating and wrong this is and how I am a self sabotaging B etc, but all that is again coming from Fixed mindset, so I wont, even tho I kinda did :-P )

Instead - I add a step goal, which is the easier/less riskier/blander option , but This is the interim goal, This is only a step towards reaching my Original goal  Growth Mindset! I am not ready for This Yet!  I am not embarrassed to Aim high! I am not settling, I am learning and growing and not flinching from Hard work and many tries and failures and many more steps than expected may be!  

hobby classes

Hobbies seem to be a childhood thing.  100% of the kids these days are sent to classes, 2-3 sports, 1-2 art. Total of 5 classes a week. Also these classes change with age, so an average middleclass kid would have taken classes for Tennis, Football, Swimming, Skiing, Classical Music , instruments , Painting , Drawing , Martial Arts , Drama, Dance, etc. In the US of A the collages also ask the kids what all extra curricular activities they have done.

I find that even tho the kids do all this, Adults dont seem to have many hobbies. It is very rare to see an adult with even one hobby. Also many of these adults had hobbies until they got into a job, even those from the generation which didnt go to classes "I used to paint in school, I used to write poetry when I was in college, short stories.. " yeah... Does life take over..? Is it they got to busy... or its just the interests changed?

So going back, What is the purpose of all those classes and trainings ? Why put ur kid thru all this when You yourself doesnot do any of it as an adult?  Is it an exploration to find the right hobby? what the kid really likes? Is it possible that this generation which had so many trainings will  continue with them as adult? Or Is it infact the expectation - that they will stop this as an adult?These are things u do as a child to pass time, to have fun  to help with other grown up things later? Like play in animals helps them hunt when they grow up. Is it just a trend and peer pressure and FOMO thing which doesn't have any inherent reason?

Exceptions are : Sports among men seems to be the most sticky, some men do play the sports they learnt (formally informally as a kid)
Singing among women
Reading - but that does not need training
Baking / Gardening - common hobbies but this is not what they learnt when they were a kid.
Photography -
Hmm As I compile this list, I think lot more people of my generation want to have a hobby and pursue something ....

I am offcourse an exception. I think its got to do with being Neuro ATypical. https://www.quora.com/Are-grown-people-with-Asperger%E2%80%99s-still-childlike
I do have a lot of hobbies and interests compared to a regular adult, but then again like the children I take 100s of classes but they seem to be for fun/to pass time , very few are sticky.

Also most of my interests are my mothers - I refused to go to classes, music and dance or sports .They say with kids its not what u say but what u do. She had many hobbies - Stitching clothes, painting, gardening, rangoli - Those are my hobbies too, except rangoli.

BTW this was triggered by me searching for some class and finding most results for kids classes! Grrr! 

Vit D

Ever wondered how animals make Vit D? 
Humans make vit D when our skin is exposed to sun light right?  So Animals and birds who have  fur and feathers? How do they make Vit D? Do they have diets which are so rich in Vit D already?

from this very interesting  page 

http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/motm/vitaminD/vitamindjm.htmThe presence of fur in animals or feathers in birds blocks UV light from reaching the skin. So in these cases, the creatures’ skin secrete oils or waxes which coat and impregnate its fur or feathers. Sunlight then interacts with the oil and produces vitamin D, which is then ingested by the animal or bird when it grooms itself.

not only that apparently the Vit D tablets that we take comes from Sheep wool! 

Did also assume that the first humans were probably black? me too! Because today people in Africa are black and Humans came from Africa so they probably looked like how people look today! Right!

But Then someone clever pointed out that underneath the fur all animals are basically pink ( i.e white :P ) So the earliest ancestors of humans when they were just about losing the fur were probably pink skinned? so ancient humans were probably white!??!

Wiki says skin pigmentation evolved 1.2 million years ago and we can say Home Sapiens were probably dark skinned and our assumption was probably correct :-P Still it is all very interesting how our assumptions colour our beliefs.

How you interpret the world depends on your own opinion of yourself ...

While others see cats as selfish, I see them as Independent , just as I see myself :-)

while you were sleeping ...

... computing has moved on to whole new levels of ingenuity, innovation and whole new world of technologies :-)
Newly awakened me ( thanks to growth mindset )  is feeling like Sleeping beauty :D
#livingUnderARock

Its not about me, Its about them!

 Very powerful Mantra to remember when

someone insults you
is aggressive towards 
ignores you
abuses you
....
Add whatever
....
sometimes praises you

"Its not about me, Its about them!"

Its many times about their insecurity, their mental blocks, their prejudices,their envy, their grief, their frustration....
Its good to examine if there is anything to take back from the outburst without any emotion tho,  any feedback is good .
but dont let anything get to you. we always have a choice to not feel bad about things. Offcourse automatic emotional bodily reactions will happen, but may decrease in time. May be good to practice staying unaffected by getting into situations purposely in lab environment?

Also good to know that nothing, just Nothing annoys them as much as not reacting and staying calm ;-) Not that you should care about that.

1984 - Not Big Brother but sneaky little shits are watching you :D

I find myself saying these words - 
Be careful on the internet! 
I think "So and so" but wouldn't admit it on the net or at work! 
How can you say this? You will go viral for this! 

Have we implemented "1984 - but by the people for the people", by having mobile camera and social media ? and being politically correct is being enforced?

I genuinely feel like there are thought police. There is always someone watching and someone ready to report me and make me viral!

Celebrities being photographed in private parties was a start, conversations of politicians being recorded when they are offline -  appreciated by the public.  Now I find even normal people being shamed and judged on social media. I was for this - when it involved sexual harassment cases or such criminal activities.
Now disturbingly I find that especially in the liberal circles - There is a small set of views that are deemed acceptable and anyone who does not agree with that is a racist/sexist or something disgusting and this shall be published on social media.   For example if I asked someone where are your from? Then I am a racist. I could be filmed and put up on twitter and if I am mildly famous there could be protesters in front of my house.
If someone referred to transgender woman as he by mistake, That would be the end of them, their career, their reputation etc.
The reason for doing is also is murky, some may be doing it as virtue signalling, and many to get clicks and followers and exposure.

They think of themselves are supremely liberal, If they are not self appointed Thought police what are they?

ps: even Obama seems to think so
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-50239261

dreams

I noticed my dreams are not frightening nightmares or scary but they are not nice either. They are mildly uncomfortable, like I am having disagreements or arguments or defying something and feeling guilty or feeling embarrassed. Mundane and boring and that too mildly bad!
Grrrr!! My subconscious is not being creative at all! 

I am Robert Bruce's Spider :)

I am Robert Bruce's Spider :)
I felt like this, when I failed to lose weight, yet again and I devised a new plan to lose weight and just got on with it.
http://mystic-babe.blogspot.com/2019/08/falling-off-wagon.html
I wrote this in August and seem to have taken it seriously. I am proud of myself to have not stopped working when there were no positive results but adverse results in fact :)
Growth mindset baby! yo!

Social media and mindset

Lot of us are facing a lot of anxiety and insecurity because of social media - Everyone is beautiful on Instagram, everyone has a perfect life in Facebook and everyone is very successful in Linked in. 

Everyone is projecting only one side of their life and portraying an unrealistic picture, There are even apps which enhance your looks and take away your flaws.  

This is all true but...

Isnt all this causing us anxiety only because we have fixed mindset?  It is only a problem because we are comparing ourselves with others and coming out smaller? We believe that everyone is in some position in this hierarchy, u are either above or below them and everyone is trying to show that they are at the top.

But if you had growth mindset, if you had a mindset where you believed in learning and improving, every success would be an inspiration, an encouragement. Some pictures and stories would be inspirational and Many would  even be irrelevant, if they are status symbols and u probably dont believe in that anymore. 

That tinge of sadness which we get - Why not me, wouldnt be there. 

The implications of having a thru and thru growth mindset seem phenomenal. 

Instead of avoiding social media because we are feeling anxious we should try to change our mindset instead.

paedophiles

I don't know if I should out this on a public blog even very few people read this.
This is the kind of shit which is making me feel like we are living in the world of '1984'. Where I should be careful and thought police are watching me. but here goes..

I have almost disgust for criminal paedophiles, I was thinking how some of the worst curses are Bastard and Incest and NOT rapist and paedophile, I had concluded these two were the worst of the worst things in the world.

There are straight men and there are sexual offenders and then there are rapists.  There are straight men who are celibate all there lives. So similarly there are paedophiles and then there are criminal paedophiles? The ones who we all hate, the disgusting scum are the criminal ones, To each one of those there are 10(20? ) others who have attraction for kids but don't do anything about this? They just feel extremely guilty and can never come out of the cupboard. They are just very unfortunate? Is it a sickness? or not? If being attracted to same sex is hard wired and nothing can be done about it,  So is paedophilia? With the difference being there is no way you can satisfy your craving with out becoming evil?

Early Indians

I am reading Early Indians, We are still talking about first humans migrating out of Africa. I notice every instance where humans succeed is a time of some kind of disaster. It got really cold and dry due to Ice age( one of many ) severe resource constraint,This may have given humans an edge over Neanderthals. Volcanic eruption lead to temperature dropping a few degrees and acid rain for years after, this may have lead humans to establish themselves better over Homo Erectus etc again and again. If life went smoothly Humans would never be able to replace displace Archaic human species Or probably never evolve at all. 
Its not just Humans, Its probable some kind of disaster which lead to evolution and prevalence of Neanderthals as well.. Good times lead to lot of mutations surviving and lot of diversity. and then disaster culls them, selects only the fittest. 
Humans evolved from a small population of few thousands, so did Neanderthals.  Even tho the evolutionary tree has many branches, only one branch seems to survive most of the times. How does even that one branch survive? Phew!  how does life go on at all in spite of all these extinctions and deaths!

Tell women they are beautiful crap ( rant )

ha ha! Rant coming up after a long time ! Ye! ;-)
Posts like - The real man makes a woman feel beautiful ( VOMIT VOMIT  ;-) Or Advise that you should tell your daughters they are beautiful so that they dont get the feeling that they are ugly. Apparently it boosts their confidence , if you dont tell they become insecure!?!
Really!! Please!!
You should be telling people that beauty is very superficial and not important. In fact, you should not be talking about all the beauty crap at all! There are better things in life. You are just making the cosmetics and plastic surgery industry rich and you are making yourself and your family really insecure!!!
Also,  There is nothing called inner beauty - That model on instagram with flawless skin is really truly more beautiful than you and me. Your stretch marks?  They are not tiger stripes and they are NOT beautiful!  Just because she is physically more beautiful does not make you MORE inner beautiful :D Nature is not a silly liberal school teacher giving consolation prizes to kids who didnt win.
But so what? Not beautiful is perfectly ok, Just deal with it!

 BTW I wonder if such feels as this are in me because I am part asexual, part spiritual, weird hybrid? If I were a normal (  ;-) normal!? One girl complimented me "you are not normal!" and It was kind of best compliment ever :-D. Does not that say it all? ) anyway, if I were a normal woman, would I want other people to think I was beautiful and want them to make me feel beautiful? Is it my hormones which makes me so blessed and above all this crap? No... Its probably  my superior intellect ;-)


ps: This was about an year ago, Again the book Mindset( yes Again!  he he!) validates my thinking. It gives an explanation to the above.
Fixed mindset people value inherent capacity and talent.  Wow She is beautiful! She is intelligent!
Growth mindset people value effort  and hard work and change.  Wow she worked hard and overcame difficulties.
Well the question of hormones aside, I think above is clearly fixed mindset about beauty and hence not good to have. I seem to have growth mindset in this particular area.

Also I hope people know that when I rant I am half joking? 

Deal with it!

August 2019

Listening to Emperror of maladies , feeling literally sick .. Still carrying on. ( Actually that day I was sick :) but I didnt know , thought it was reaction to the book )

Have we become too soft , I feel that is the problem with me, with all this Louise hay and positive thinking brigade.
I am avoiding unpleasantness and pain ( tho that may not exactly be what they are preaching )
I avoid Chernobyl, or powerful documentaries Or looking at linked in. I have become avoidance master.
So I decided I will listen to the book and if I get unpleasant consequences, I will deal with it.

This is such a powerful Mantra - I will deal with it. It gives me so much power.

Discipline is also the same thing, It is carrying on even with the discomfort and the pain.

killing the joy of living ( rant )

I was wondering if we are killing magic, I am also wondering if we are killing the joy of living my being too organised
Not just in daily life but the government and the businesses that we deal with - 10 years ago I used to use my name with initials sometimes and sometimes expanded it didn't create any problems, but now if the name does not pattern match letter to letter,  it can cause me huge problems, airlines wont fly me, banks dont give me money. We used to be human before and know that  J Bond and James M Bond could be the same person. Now we are all stupid computers. Bus in Kannada becomes Bassu, Stupid Stupid rigid people cant understand this.
Everything is like this, Its creeping up on us, The road rules, the booking months in advance for holidays or to even meet friends, time and date is booked weeks in advance.
I dont know if its just me , but I feel like this is soul sucking, its not free., Its the tyranny of the left brain. We are killing our spontaneity, we are killing the random curve loving right brain activities, we are becoming dull square stupid boxes.
In case of disaster, we will go down in numbers really fast, this kind of mind is adapted for this well curated boring world.
I wonder if the being which has evolved in the natural world for 3 billion years is getting stifled and suffocated in this comfortable and reliable but dry and boring world, I wonder if this is causing high number of autism cases and depression and anxiety.
Rigid rigid rigid rigid I hate it, This is western way of life that is infecting the whole world and bringing with it the whole lot of diseases - mental and physical.
They didn't just infect the native Americans with small pox, they are infecting all of us now, spoiling the lives with their materialism and their clock work like rigidity, killing joy and killing the planet at the same time.
Internet is a gift as well as a weapon, Its a white mans disease carrier.

:-D

( I think I can get away with this. As a brown woman I wont be called racist. If I wrote the something about Black mans or Indian mans disease! Oh my ! I would totally be a racist! ) 

Sati Savitri

In western fairy tales, the woman the princess is a helpless little wimp who gets into trouble, a Strong brave prince or Knight in Shining armour comes and saves her. They get married and live happily ever after! This portrays women as weak and men as strong, This makes who ever hears it feel like a woman needs a man in her life to save her. Sexist! fine!

In India we have an exactly opposite story - Savitri.
Her husband ( Satyavaan - but seriously Satyavaan who? ) was cursed to die young, in-spite of that Savitri married him. Then as expected, he died on the designated day, but Savitri was so powerful she chased Yama the God death himself  and got her husband back from the dead!  The western Prince just fought dragons, this Lady fought the ultimate villain death!

But Savitri is the epitome of Sexism, How Ironic is that!? Most feminists' blood boils at the mention of her name :-)  Isnt that funny? No Really! Savitri is sexist not a feminist as you would expect.

West has this type of sexism where woman is weak and man is strong and so he carries the womans bags, this has at least some kind of advantage.
India has a type of sexism where woman is not weak she is just lowly!  ha ha!  So she carries her husbands bag! There is absolutely no silver lining to this sexism.

So Savitri was just doing her duty, she is not a Hero for rescuing her husband. She is symbol of this kind of sexism which tells all women that its their ultimate duty to look after their husbands and nothing else and she shows the lengths to which a wife should go to achieve this. 
Can the Prince story be interpreted in the same way? It shows the lengths to which a man should go to please his beloved??  but it isnt is it?

It seems like its not the story that is important, Its how it is told.  You can take any story and squeeze out any moral out of it.  A woman is strong narrative can be used to oppress a woman or a woman is weak narrative can be used to oppress a woman. In fact not just women, men are as easily manipulated  by clever people by being glorified, thats a story for another day. Today may be we should think of how to make Savitri into feminist icon, a Hero  and not a door mat ;-) 

are we becoming fake in the quest to be nice?

These days I find that we are all complimenting each other all the time, Wow you look lovely! Lovely dress! Wow your paintings are so beautiful!  There is a very definite expectation - atleast from the women that some compliment will pass from your lips when you meet them. Especially in the west and especially the little girls even as young as 4! You have to say my princess is so pretty!!! You are the cutest! If I forget, I can see their face fall and their parents will remind me Ahem!!... Oh yeah!! you are so cute!
This is the result of the positive thinking revolution I guess.  We are being so positive, so nice to each other! This is very good for us! This MUST be very good for us right?
Or is it?
People used to give in to their natural urges like jealousy, their bitterness, their anger and make rude and nasty comments about us before. I didn't like it. This is infact definitely better than that but ...

I think this is making us more prone to depression and sadness. One type of person relies too much on this kind of outside validation to be happy and is depressed when they dont get that 100th like on Insta.  another ( like me ) just discounts all positive feedback as flattery. I put all compliments in a Not true box. less dangerous of the two but u could say I am having trust issues?

 When we are doing this all praise we are doing a great dis-service to the person by not giving true feedback that will help them grow. Saying it like it is with out malice is a very valuable thing, even tho we dont like what we hear, it is good for us. like medicine.

We also need to ask ourselves, are we being nice for the sake of others or for us? Being nice is an easy way to be liked. Telling truth is hard work, it may make us unpopular. So is it for others or for us that we are being nice?

Not only that - What does not kill you, makes u stronger.  We are becoming snowflakes ( yes I used that word, you liberals! go on a flame war! ha! but u cant cause this blog is so private! ha! ) We are becoming like princesses who get bruised by a hair which is under 7 blankets. Whats with all the Fat shaming, thin shaming,  trigger warnings? ppl! Just deal with it! no? We are not able to deal with even little bit criticism because we are used to being coddled. Standing up to abuse is a good thing, but being cowed down by it is not. No pain no gain doesnot apply just for the body.  To make us strong we need to learn to deal with negative feelings.

Again my instincts in psychology seem to be supported by research.  Just as I thought! Mindset book talks about this as well, How boys who generally keep putting each other down are unaffected by other peoples opinion or comments that much and can stand up for criticism or failures much better in life than girls who are used to hearing only good things. 

Fomo?

Feel anxious at other peoples achievements? Feel Inspired instead.
instead of  seeing what we have not done, we can see what is possible to do :-)
 - fixed vs growth mindset!

ps: one of my 2019 resolution - genuinely feel happy for other peoples achievements. At the fag end of the year I find the way to make it happen :-) 

All of life is an Experiment

Look at life as series of Experiments instead of series of Experiences
- Zig Zigler ( Via K )
I seem to be getting this message from every where! this almost makes me wake up with excitement, to look at each day as if I am a mad scientist who is going to discover something new :-)
Every mistake is an opportunity to learn ! in fact its not a mistake at all! its an attempt!
Also just like an experiment - We should know why are are trying something, what we expect and what we learnt by it, What we change the next time.

Life's life this? Brilliant art by
https://www.deviantart.com/darkki1/art/Planetarium-561500038